


once more into the breach

by lilithqueen



Category: James Asher Vampire Series - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, James gets captured once again, Light Angst, M/M, Morning After, Mutual Pining, Plotless OT3 Cuddle Pile, Simon Gets A Cat, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, psychic dreams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-10-03 18:55:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20457842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithqueen/pseuds/lilithqueen
Summary: Because what this fandom needed was a finely-crafted selection of AUs and fic snippets, including but not by any means limited to: a morning after in the 1550s, human!Simon almost ignoring his cellphone and narrowly averting disastrous consequences, a soulmate AU, Lydia not being as afraid of demons as she ought to be, and Psychic Dreams For Everyone.And because these three deserve happiness somewhere.





	1. Modern AU (no vampires)

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr to yell about the ot3 at [notapaladin](http://notapaladin.tumblr.com/)

>simon

>simon are you there

>SIMON WHEN YOU SEE THIS CALL ME

The phone rang once. Twice. Simon de Ysidro gently shoved an inquisitive cat away and closed his eyes, breathing out hard through his nose. For the first time, he began to wonder if a proper, permanent cellphone might be an acceptable risk in his line of work. It was something he’d never considered before meeting the Ashers—no, he corrected that line of thought, before _befriending_ the Ashers. One tended not to trust the man holding you at gunpoint and demanding your aid. That they trusted him _now_ was a miracle. That he in turn extended his trust to them…

(A cheap motel in Budapest, all three of them crammed into a single bed. A train to Istanbul with Lydia’s head on his shoulder and her hair a crimson glory spilling over his coat as she slept, trusting him to keep her safe for the night. Waiting for rescue in a Chinese mountain cavern, knowing they wouldn’t abandon him. The first time he and James had broken out of a cramped London basement together, and he’d looked at the man in the moonlight and thought--)

Lydia’s voice snapped through the connection, a leash wound tight around lurking panic. “James is gone.”

_No._ He clenched his free hand into a fist, nails digging sharply into his palm. “For how long?”

“Since I messaged you!” She sounded close to screaming. Or sobbing.

Three days, then. “...Ah.” He’d been on a job; he cursed it now. Lydia had needed him, and he’d been _busy_. ‘Twould serve him right if she blocked him on all her social media. _Jesu Maria, I really ought to get a proper cellphone. _“I assume he did not vanish at the very instant you typed those words?”

There was a faint noise. He suspected she was biting off all manner of foul language, but when she spoke her voice was admirably controlled. Still, he knew this didn’t mean he was off the hook. “_No_. He went to work—as you’re quite aware, we do have actual jobs—and then he never came home.”

Neither of them needed to speak the words. The cabal calling itself the Hand of God had tried to kill each of them before; after they’d been stopped from slaughtering Simon’s compatriots in a bid to reverse-engineer the serum that had given them their unique capabilities, he suspected they held a grudge. He should have shot them all. “Have you a list of their likely safe houses?”

She took a deep breath—calming herself, he thought. “I’ve been able to narrow it down to three based on Blaydon’s last known aliases, but I can’t...”

She was no trained killer. The closest she had ever come were cadavers on the dissecting table. Simon’s eyes were vaguely focused in the direction of the far wall, but his mind remembered the way she and James smiled at each other, how they held hands when no one was looking. How once, in Budapest, they’d tugged him onto the bed between them when he would have taken the floor. “_Lydia_.” Emotion threatened to choke him, and he swallowed. “Send me what you have. I will find him.”

\--

James Asher knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the men calling themselves the Hand of God were going to kill him. They’d been almost polite at first once the chloroform had worn off, but that hadn’t lasted long. In truth, he was surprised they hadn’t finished him off already; his ribs were surely bruised if not broken, and they’d seen to it that his left eye was entirely swollen shut. Always the same questions, and he could never answer them.

“_Where is the serum?”_

“_Where is Subject No. 1555?”_

Subject No. 1555. Of over a thousand subjects, less than two-thirds survived—and less than half of that lived long, once the scientists that had made them realized their supposed “genetic reconfiguration” made them into near-silent, near-unstoppable killing machines. Ysidro had been one of the few to survive the grinder of the initial training; James shuddered at the thought of the Hand of God getting him in their clutches again. The mental image of those glittering eyes dulled and drugged, his hands meticulously flayed open for Blaydon to see how the nerves connected—a pointless cruelty, there were no physical differences—made him long for a pistol in his hands.

He wasn’t even sure he could hold one now. One of the men had stomped on his dominant hand; by the swelling and the stiff agony every time he tried to move it, he was sure some of the bones were broken. That had been the second day. And still they asked the same questions every time they brought him food, and even if he could answer, he knew he never would.

_Lydia. Lydia, darling, I’m sorry. Ysidro…_

He closed his good eye and rested his cheek on the cold stone floor. His thoughts shimmered hazily; there, Lydia carefully applying her makeup in the morning; there, the cornsilk of Ysidro’s hair against his cheek. Their voices, low and indistinct over his head as he’d drifted in and out of consciousness in an abandoned graveyard.

The sound of a gunshot.

Awareness returned, bringing pain with it. Movement was slow and excruciating, and even if he’d been able to sit up the door was utterly free of any sort of grates, grilles, or bars which would have let him see what was going on. Instead, he focused his ears; the house they’d taken him to had remarkably good acoustics, even if the vents had been made annoyingly too small for even Ysidro to possibly fit. By the sounds of it, the Hand of God was under attack; there were a few more gunshots, scattered and wild and likely to attract police attention if they hadn’t taken him out of the city entirely. Something hit his door with a thump and a choked-off cry, and he braced himself for a struggle. An enemy of his enemy wasn’t necessarily his friend.

The door swung open. At first James only registered the basics—pale skin, pale hair, dark clothing, blood and the glint of steel—and then the figure in the doorway resolved itself into a young greyhound of a man striding towards him with a smirk on his narrow lips.

“Why, Mr. Asher. We really must stop meeting like this.”

He let out a shaky breath. “Simon.” Too late, he realized he’d never called Ysidro by his first name; by the color in his cheeks and the fractional widening of his eyes, Ysidro knew it too. Still, it was too late to take it back—and they had more pressing concerns. “What are you—how did you find me?”

Simon knelt by his side, eyes soft and joyous. “Your wife is a _marvel_, and you are the luckiest man in the world to have her. Come—can you stand? I have dealt with the Hand of God, and we have transportation waiting.”

He took a shallow breath, braced himself, and attempted to sit up. He made it perhaps a few inches off the floor before he couldn’t suppress his cry of pain, and then Simon was there with strong, cool hands steadying him. “I—think—“

“You cannot.” Sighing, Simon moved; James was cognizant only of a moment of disorientation and brief, vivid pain, and then he was being lifted to his feet. Though he instinctively put an arm around Simon’s shoulder, he knew it was a formality. Simon would never let him stumble.

Not even over the corpses of men with their throats neatly slashed. He grimaced as they skirted a spray of blood; the Hand of God had taken his shoes. “And you’re sure they’re all dead?”

“Stairs.” It was a while before Simon spoke again, letting James catch his breath on the landing. “I have slain every man stupid enough to be present in this building. Looking at how they’ve treated you, I would do it again.”

His voice was so quiet and fierce that for a moment, James wasn’t sure he’d heard it; when he risked lifting his gaze from the floor to meet Simon’s eyes, the heat in them made his heart skip a beat. “Simon...” _I would do the same for you_ seemed paltry. _Thank you_ seemed worse. Not for the first time, he remembered a morning in Budapest with Simon curled against his chest and Lydia’s arm and hair flung over them. Not for the first time, he thought _I really need to talk to Lydia about this._

Simon turned his head away even as he took James’s shoulder again. “Come. We haven’t much time before the police get here.”

By the time James was buckled securely into Simon’s utterly nondescript gray car—nondescript, that was, unless you looked at the engine—he’d filed all thoughts of _emotions_ away for a time when he could mull them over properly. When he could think rationally about the future, instead of dwelling on intertwined fingers in Paris and the messages he’d seen on Lydia’s phone.

_Lydia_. She’d be clear-minded, surely. She’d tell him Simon was their friend and nothing more, that even friendship was a risk to their lives and livelihood. She’d be sensible about it.

\--

_sdY has joined the chat!_

>Hello, Professor, Doctor. Are you both quite well?

>simon we were talking and

>we were thinking that after you’ve been such a good

>My wife and I were discussing the prospect of...ah, I will let her say it.

>friend

>to us

>Did you disconnect? James, has Lydia dropped her phone?

>Lydia and I were wondering if you would like to go to dinner with us. Venue and time at your discretion.

>thx darling

>hsd.fsdfge;[68

>Forgive me, that was the cat.

>I THOUGHT WE BROKE YOU.

>I assure you, it would take far more than that to break me. I must, however, question: is this intended to be merely a meal?

>no

>...If you would prefer that.

>I think I would prefer to have this talk in person. To better ascertain your intentions, you understand. I will be there in half an hour.

>sIMON

sdY has left the chat!

>Ysidro pl—damn it.


	2. 1500s AU (still no vampires)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the fact that I managed to write this without being sucked into a wikipedia rabbit hole of researching fashion in 1550s Europe is a miracle

Don Simon Xavier Christian Morado de la Cadena-Ysidro knew before he opened his eyes that he was in deep, deep trouble.

He was naked, and the blankets under him had the delirious softness that only came from being well and frequently washed—the bedlinens of a household which could afford to do its laundry every other day. Of course, given the occupations of the mistress of the house, they would have to. The faint breeze that was currently stirring his hair was cool and damp; he took an annoyed moment to reflect that Jeffery had been right, and it was indeed raining. The bed, meanwhile, was warm—almost too warm, with (God help him) three bodies in it. There was a sinewy bare arm slung carelessly over his stomach, and he knew that if he turned his head he would bury it in a woman’s thick red hair.

_And_ his head felt like the King’s cavalry were galloping over it. That, at least, he could blame on the wine—wine he’d shared with the suspected heretics his lord had set him to spy upon last year. Gaining the trust of the clever, shrewd scholar Sir James Asher and his studious wife Lydia—who all said was secretly an alchemist, a secret he’d really meant to pass on to his comrades at some point—had been no easy thing, but it had led to many such late nights. Nights spent deep in wine and conversation, laughing with Mistress Asher and drawing her more distrustful husband to favor him with rare smiles. Nights where he could forget, for a time, that he was supposed to be their enemy in the guise of a friend.

His lord would have called Mistress Asher—tall, brilliant, beautiful Lydia of the thoughtful gaze and the thick spectacles—an easy target. Easy, and of lower value compared to her husband. James Asher had been knighted for his diplomatic service to the Crown; though he insisted to all and sundry that he was now naught but a simple scholar of languages, Simon knew from his sharp eyes that he had never lost his touch. He was harder to draw out, harder to make slip, and trusted Spanish Catholic noblemen not at all.

_He’d trusted me quite well last night._

With a brief prayer to heaven for his immortal soul, Simon wedged open one eye. Agony lanced through his skull before he could get more than a vague impression of the room bathed in morning sunlight, and he squeezed his eyes shut with an involuntary hiss. Next to him, Sir Asher—_James_, he remembered gasping, _please_—grumbled something and pulled him closer. He froze, afraid he’d woken the man, but Asher slumbered on.

Leaving Simon to think. _I must leave. Now. Before they wake in truth._ Excesses of tangled limbs and breathless touches were one thing at midnight, and an entirely different thing in the light of day. He doubted God would forgive him _this_. He wondered fleetingly if the commandment against coveting a man’s wife still applied if one coveted the man as well. Regardless, to be caught in their bed would very possibly spell ruin—but before he could plot an escape route, he would have to get _out_ of bed. Which meant he had to open his eyes, a difficult prospect when his eyelids felt as though they’d each had a mountain laid on top of them.

Bracing himself, he levered one eye open just enough to survey the room—all dark wood and brown brocade—through a narrow slit of vision. Yes, that _was_ Lydia’s farthingale thrown over the chest of drawers, with James’s hose and doublet in a heap atop it. He had a hazy recollection of tumbling her back onto the bed, of her laughter and James’s half-hearted scolding as they’d worked her out of her layers, of the way her giggles had turned into sighs under their hands. As if she felt his thoughts, she nestled closer into his side, bare skin like a brand as strands of her coppery hair drifted in front of his face. When he turned his gaze to her, he felt a flush of shame at the sight of her skin marked by the too-tight grip of his nails.

His clothing was somewhere underneath theirs, he thought. He distinctly remembered loosening his ruff to let his head list onto the shoulder of James’s doublet, the way Lydia had stared at him until he’d teased her—imagine, a respectable married woman being so distracted by another man’s bare throat! Remembered the way James had commented in that falsely mild way of his that he, Simon, was distracting _anyway_.

He wasn’t sure which of them had kissed him first.

Nor was he sure, upon further reflection, what this made him to them. Still friends, he hoped, but...well. ‘Twould not be the first time he’d had a _friendship_ like this end in chilly, awkward silences in the light of day. It would, however, be the first time he knew he’d mourn its loss.

“Mm. Simon…?”

_Cagafuego._

Lydia was awake, and he couldn’t suppress a shiver as her lips brushed his ear. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Th’art still here.”

He found himself whispering too; he had a nasty suspicion that any noise above that would return his skull to its previous trampled-upon state. “Forgive me.”

She sighed. Any hopes that he might still be able to disentangle himself were immediately dashed as she slid a leg over his thigh, effectively pinning him. “Ridiculous man, there is naught to forgive.”

_Oh_. Well, at the very least Lydia was still fond of him. There was a slim chance he could escape the bed with his social connections intact. The craving to touch her, to run a hand up that leg and pull her onto him, was increasingly seeming like a good idea to give in to. As his fingers flexed—he _could_, if he wanted, though he thought it might be a breach of some strange etiquette not to at least invite James to watch—she murmured, “Save for the part where thou art laying on the ends of my hair.”

He shifted his weight—so he was, he’d not realized how long it was unbound when he’d been far more interested in burying his hands in it—but the movement woke James, who announced his return to the land of the living with a groan and a muttered, “Drive a dagger ‘twixt my ribs, ‘twould be a mercy.”

Lydia could despise him (and probably poison him, but that could be avoided by taking care with his food and drink). James, he was suddenly aware, could ruin him. He couldn’t think past the pounding of his heart; operating on instinct, he pushed himself upright and was halfway over Lydia’s slim form (the easiest escape route, though he cursed James for being between him and the window) when the man abruptly pulled him back down. Taken by surprise, he went with a grunt. “James—?!”

James levered himself up on one elbow, the better to look at the both of them. His hair was sticking up in all directions, and the love bites Simon remembered leaving hours ago were bruises now. “How art either of thee awake?”

The response was automatic. “We have not thine advanced years, sir--” He was cut off by his own undignified squeak when Lydia poked his ribs, just where he’d foolishly let on the previous night that he was ticklish. “Mistress—_Lydia!”_

She was grinning hugely at him, fingertips hovering over his stomach in clear threat. “That is my lord husband whose advanced years thou mock’st, and I do _not_ recall such cheek from thee last night.”

Devil take the ancestors who had cursed him with skin so fair it was impossible to hide the merest flush of heat. “Ah. Last night was...” _A mistake. The utter and complete failure of my mission. Damnation for my immortal soul._

_The sweetest bliss I’ve ever had._

“Something to be discussed _after_ we break our fast.” James was almost—almost—smiling at him. There was a look in his eye Simon was afraid to call fond. “Which can wait until my skull is not fit to burst its seams.” Saying so, he caressed Simon’s hip on the way to reaching across him, pulling the coverlet up over them all.

Simon blew out a breath, heart still thudding away in his ribs. “...I ought to find my own lodgings.”

Lydia gestured towards the window, out at the rain which both men knew perfectly well she couldn’t see without her spectacles. “What sort of friends would we be, sir, to let thee perish in the wet? Nay, thou must stay here at the _least_ until it stops, for the sake of thy horse if nothing else.”

English rain could last for days. The next sennight stretched in front of him, enticing visions of a warm bed and steady hands and laughter, of James’s hands at his hips and Lydia’s mouth at his throat. Of forgetting his mission, just for a while.

Smiling, he nestled into the mattress and waited for the rain to stop.


	3. The One Where Simon's A Demon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was gonna have more pining but instead i went for mild angst whoops

There was a demon in her garden.

Lydia slipped her glasses on, the better to make out Ysidro’s features in the moonlight. Seated and alert, he resembled a beautiful young man, nearly statue-like in his stillness, with his loose hair floating lightly around his collar in the night breeze. Only occasionally, when his magic slipped—or when he felt able to relax—could she see the fangs, the claws, the glow of his yellow eyes. And only when he was alone with her and James could she see his edges blurred with shadow, wisps of the freezing primordial darkness that made him bleeding off into the air.

She knew that the shadows behind him unfolded into wings. She knew that he devoured mortal souls, that holy ground burned his feet like acid.

She flung herself into his arms, and his wings came around her like a shroud. “Simon!”

“Mistress.” His voice was dry as ever, but the arms he wrapped around her were solid as a bank vault, and she shivered as his cold nose brushed her ear. “How fare you and Miss Miranda, now that the curse is broken?”

For a long moment, all she could do was cling to him, tucking her head against his neck. Damned he might be, but the mere reminder of what they had been through—what her _daughter_ had been through, when the forces of Hell had deemed them in need of a “warning” that had put her toddler in unwakeable slumber—left her unable to even contemplate the idea of leaving the circle of his arms. Finally, she whispered, “We are well. James is with Miranda now, but…we felt your arrival. I was—afterwards—we didn’t know what became of you...”

She didn’t need to lift her head to know his lips had twitched into the suggestion of a grimace. She still had nightmares of him on the tower, wings ragged holes in the starry sky as he clawed at the demon that had tried to kill her. “Your perimeter of holy water is weakening, though it will keep out the lesser hellspawn well enough.”

A sensible woman, a _righteous_ woman, would have smote him. Would have called three priests and a rabbi to arm themselves and destroy this Count of Hell before letting him into her household, into her arms. Would have cried _Get thee behind me, Satan_, at the first mention of her husband’s unwilling deal with a demon, never mind in all the years since.

Lydia pulled away just far enough to look him in the face and asked, “Would you like to come inside?”

He smiled at her, and the tip of one fang showed. “Of course.”

The house was dark and—this late at night—quiet. The servants were asleep, and Lydia felt oddly like a thief as she crossed the door to the kitchen without making a sound. Simon, of course, had no need for the gaslight she turned on low so as not to break her neck on the stairs. When he slipped a hand into hers anyway, dagger-sharp claws gentle as moth wings, she had to turn her face away lest he see her blush as she twined their fingers together. The last time she’d held his hand had been in a Russian crypt, half-frozen to death, with holy water seeping under the door. Then, she’d been afraid for her life and that of her unborn child, and now—thanks to this man, this _demon_—she and Miranda were safe many times over.

_He eats souls. I’ve seen what happens to those the demons eat. I shouldn’t trust him at my back._

_But I do._

As she turned at the landing to the nursery, she looked down at their joined hands. She could barely see them; shadow seeped from his long fingers, melting with the gloom. The first time she’d seen it, she’d inquired whether demons dissolved in sunlight, and he’d abruptly metamorphosed back into a creature of crystalline hard edges and stiff snobbery. Demons, he’d explained, only revealed their true forms in times of safety—in other words, for a sensible demon, never.

The nursery was an oasis of calm. Miranda was asleep; by her side James was gazing at her tenderly, broken ankle propped up on a chair. As Lydia entered the room, he lifted his head and smiled tiredly at her. “So you found our demon.”

“James.” Simon nodded at him; after a moment in which Lydia watched James’s gaze shift away, the demon crossed the room to him and clasped his forearm. When he spoke, she could see his fangs. “Are you healing well?”

He glanced at his heavily splinted ankle. “As well as can be expected.”

Simon’s expression didn’t change, but his outline grew noticeably sharper. “I have offered to eat Millward, I will remind you.”

Lydia knew he would do it. She had seen him shed the human shell he wore like a coat once, and remembered with a shudder her confused impression of teeth and wings and scales.

Judging from the grim set of his mouth, James was remembering it too. “Ysidro.”

He half turned away, glancing down at Miranda. She didn’t stir, even when he reached down to smooth down a strand of fine hair with one claw. “His zealotry might have left your daughter an orphan and Mistress Lydia a demon’s dinner. Such a thing is...unacceptable.”

Lydia felt like screaming. _None of this—_none_ of this!—would ever had happened if you hadn’t dragged us into your world, if you hadn’t demanded that James help you._She said nothing.

James’s eyes were cold. “And if we had stumbled too close to _your_ demesne? If we were strangers, and you had deemed _us_ in need of such a warning?”

Ysidro was silent.

Lydia bit her lip and let her gaze drop to the floor. _He would have done the same. I know he would have. He probably would have done worse; it’s well within his capabilities_.

Her husband took a breath, closing his eyes. “But...you did save us. Thank you.”

Ysidro stood like a statue carved in marble, movement only in the flicker of his sulfurous eyes from Miranda’s sleeping form to their faces. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “I will no longer involve myself with your affairs, if that is what you wish.”

_No_, she thought desperately, and then _yes_. To be free of all thoughts of demons and angels, to have a normal life where she and James and Miranda could all live peacefully…

To never see Simon again.

Helplessly, she looked at James—who had gone quiet, eyes shuttered, and she knew he was weighing the same options. Demons could never be trusted fully; their continued existences called for death and pain. Once cast out of heaven, they could never be redeemed. And yet…Simon was their friend. Had been their friend for nearly six years. She remembered picquet on the train, walks on the Embankment, late dinners at the Cafe Royale. She knew James was thinking of the same.

By the time he opened his mouth to speak Simon was gone, melted away into the shadows.


	4. Soulmate AU

By the time the first soulmark appears on his wrist, Don Simon Ysidro has been dead for over three hundred years. At first he doesn’t even notice the burn; he has just fed, and assumes his victim had gotten in a lucky strike. But then it doesn’t fade away, and he wipes blood away from his wrist and looks down.

Just where his pulse would beat (if he still had one) is a crossed quill and dagger, the fresh red of a just-born soul.

For a moment, all he can do is stare. It hasn’t sunk in yet, but he knows the shock is waiting in ambush somewhere. Vampires do not, as a general rule, have soulmarks—it is part and parcel of their being damned. Those who had them in life invariably find them faded within a few turns of the new moon. He’s never heard of any of his kind getting _new_ soulmarks.

_Madre de Dios._

Damned or no, part of him entertains the thought of finding this new soul. Of seeing them grow from afar, living vicariously through their happiness. Of one day—perhaps—declaring himself. The much larger and more sensible part of him thinks of all the ways it could go wrong. Thinks of the fledglings he’s seen whose soulmates dragged them screaming into sunlight. He has to sit down hard on the cobblestones.

They could be anywhere in the world, this new soulmate of his. There is no need to panic. Nothing has changed for him, nor will it ever. He will stay in London, and he will hunt, and perhaps some night the quill and dagger will sizzle into the flat black of a deceased soul. He will be safe.

Twelve years later, a scalpel etches itself into his opposite wrist in a flourish of crimson, and he climbs back into his casket to scream.

& &

Lydia is born with two soulmarks, and her parents are confused. (Her aunts are united in their horror, which isn’t better.) The coiled serpent on her left wrist is black and dead, and so that is safe enough—the scandal, should a gently bred young lady have _two_ soulmates in one house! Why, she should have to pick one and abandon the other, and such a thing simply Isn’t Done. Far better to only have one future young man to worry about. (Aunt Faith traces the faded rabbit mark of her Clara on her wrist, and says nothing.)

It’s the quill and dagger on her right that concern them the most. The mark is positively glowing with vitality, and none of them can decide what it means. A scholar? A soldier? Her relations fuss endlessly over her whenever she leaves the house—she must be perfect, _perfect_, in case she should encounter the sure-to-be paragon she is destined for.

She is thirteen, mostly elbows and hair, and still thinking mostly of the stolen anatomy texts under her floorboards (muscles and sinew and glands, the mysterious flesh and bone that makes up human life) when her uncle introduces her to Professor James Asher. “And may I present my niece, Miss Lydia?”

The man is tall and thin and brown; if she hadn’t been staring at him, she’s sure he would have blended into the wallpaper. As it is, she has a moment to take in the flicker of astonishment that crosses his face before it smooths away_, _the way his hand ever so briefly goes to his right wrist in a way that could be (but isn’t) just him adjusting his cuff. Automatically she drops into a curtsy and murmurs something that she _hopes_ was “Pleased to meet you, sir.”

Because the inside of her right wrist is sending fire through her veins.

& &

James is born with a dead soulmark, and his parents grieve for him. He will go through life alone, with a gaping wound in his soul where another’s should reach out to twine with his. No matter what sort of person he goes on to meet, they will never match the delicately traced scales of the snake on his wrist. (Perhaps it is for the best, they whisper to each other, for what sort of woman has a snake’s soul?)

When he is twelve years old a scalpel shimmers delicately onto his other wrist, and at first he doesn’t know what to make of it. _She must be smart_, he thinks. She’s probably going to grow up to be a nurse—maybe even a doctor—and he hopes she likes boys who like words. He wonders what her name is.

Years pass. In his service to King and Country, he almost forgets what he’d dreamed about the woman whose soul is a honed blade. There is blood enough on his hands.

When he is introduced to Miss Lydia, all of just-turned-thirteen with hair like copper and the unfocused gaze of someone who should really be wearing heavy spectacles, he feels like that scalpel has just opened all his veins. But she is young, and can do so much better, and _we’re soulmates_ has never convinced men as wealthy as her father—so by the time she is disinherited and can marry him after all, he’d nearly given up hope.

Six years later, he still can hardly believe it. Lydia is _real_ and _loves him_. He thinks sometimes of his parents whispering in corners and shakes his head. What need does he have for a dead soulmate? Lydia is all he’ll ever want, tall and beautiful and sharp as her scalpels.

And then, one day in 1907, he comes home to a sleeping house and a pale intruder—bone pale, death-pale—waiting in his bedroom. Golden eyes meet his, and he feels his heart skip a beat.

“My name is Don Simon Xavier Christian Morado de la Cadena-Ysidro, and I am what you call a vampire."

The coiled serpent on his wrist burns.


	5. Psychic Dreams For Everyone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm honestly not sure where this came from; I got possessed by words and the next thing I knew I had three pages worth of fic. At least I'm pretty sure I got all the typos.
> 
> ANYWAY. Turns out Simon's not the only one who can poke around in dreams now. Canonverse, sometime after book 8.

The sunlight was like warm honey slowly dripping down a glass, hazy and unreal, and Lydia knew she was in a dream.

_It’s not my dream_, she realized._ My dreams are never this...they’re never like this. _Her dreams were sharp staccato things, flicking from one image or scenario to the next, never entirely still. In her dreams, pituitary glands had a tendency to turn into scraps of paper or the text of an article on elephants in one of Simon’s _National Geographic_ magazines. This dream was slow and blurred, almost drugged in its somnolence—the sort of thing she thought she might dream if she had a whole day in which to do nothing but sleep. The surroundings melted like watercolors when she turned her head, but she quickly realized she was in a garden. It might have been the one at her house in Oxford, but the details were uncertain—and she was sure she’d never planted so many roses. The smell of them hung in the air like a wet blanket. It was mid-afternoon, but the shadows were wrong—where everything ought to have been tinted gold, they were instead the silvery-blue of moonlight, as though painted by an artist who…

Who had not seen the light of day in a very, very long time.

All at once, with a pang so sharp it felt like she’d been stabbed, she knew whose subconscious mind she was in. _He’s forgotten how sunlight looks._

But he—if it _was_ Simon, she thought, and not some other vampire testing her defenses—was nowhere to be found. The roses where she stood had been trained in a sort of arbor over her head; as she made her way down the path she half-expected them to attack her at any moment. There was always a catch in dreams like these. But all they did was nod gently and—once or twice—bump her on the forehead, soft as rose petals were in waking. When she turned a corner she found herself standing next to an enormous whitethorn tree shedding its flowers all over the cobblestones; ahead of her was an open courtyard with its roses hemmed by privet and hugging more whitethorns. It had clearly been carefully maintained at one point, but now the roses were great leggy things, the trees gnarled and heavy with the weight of their branches.

And in the center was a young man sitting on a bench, with a fat orange cat in his lap. His eyes were closed, his face tilted up to the light, and she knew it intimately. Had seen it just a few hours ago, in fact, following a game of chess in which he’d utterly demolished her. There were the high cheekbones, the aquiline nose, the scars carving his cheek and throat. He wore the same sort of suits he favored in the waking world, tailored precisely to his slender form with the gray wool turned golden in the light. But his skin—though still fair—held the flush of life, and the hair that fell to his shoulders was pale ash blond instead of white. She knew that if he opened them his eyes would be hazel. Dimly she felt a wave of contentment, of peace, of the knowledge that an ocean of horror and blood and death on her—no, on _his_ hands, this was not _her_ dream—was, for the moment, kept at bay.

_We look as we wish we did in life. As we do in our own sweetest dreams…_

_Is this what he dreams?_

“_There_ you are.”

It was with a start that Lydia recognized her own voice; instinctively, she pressed herself tighter against the tree. The shadows were deep, and she didn’t want to imagine how Simon would react to her trespassing (as she seemed to be) in his mind. It wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t meant to do it, wasn’t even sure _how_ she was doing it. It might not even matter that she was his friend. Memories of a hundred cool kisses to her fingers, of a thousand conversations, of cards and chess and microscopes and _did your copy of this journal come yet_ intruded into her mind. She tried to ignore them and failed._ I wonder if that’s what caused this. Some sort of—of psychical leak, from spending so much time around him. I wonder if Jamie has it too; I know they’re friends, though they’d deny it, with how often Simon will bring him up…and Jamie asked him to keep me and Miranda safe… _

The image of her that tripped gaily around a nodding rosebush to beam at Simon was clad in the enormous crinolined skirts and ruffs of a wealthy Elizabethan lady, jade silk gown studded with seed pearls and richly striped with plum. (_Such dyes_, she recalled Ysidro saying once, _would have been worth a king’s ransom w__h__en I was young_.) She wore her spectacles, and Lydia was astonished both that Simon’s dreams included them and to realize that—in the dream, at any rate—they did _not_ make her look in the least goggle-eyed. And then she sat down beside him, negligently letting her skirts cascade over his thigh, and poked him teasingly in the ribs. “Dreaming again?”

“The sunlight is pleasant.” It was the same voice she heard when waking, but this time unmistakably warm with affection. Simon was leaning forward now, elbows resting on his knee, and grinning back at her—no, at the image of her, his face was turned away from Lydia where she stood in the shadow of the tree. The cat had left his lap to headbutt the dreaming image of her shins. “Can you blame a man?”

“Hmph,” said her dream counterpart, reaching down to run a hand along the cat’s back. “I can when a man promised to meet with us for supper, and I find him dozing in my garden instead.”

When she straightened and turned to press a soft kiss to Simon’s mouth Lydia squeaked a little and froze, certain Simon would somehow hear her. _This is what he—_

Simon did not hear her. Simon, in fact, had a gentle hand on her counterpart’s jaw, angling her head to return the kiss—slow, sweet, with a soft unconscious noise in the back of his throat. His voice, when he spoke, was a barely audible murmur that nevertheless held a world of tenderness. “Because only in dreams can I do this, Lydia.”

_He has to be sending this. Seducing me—oh, I am going to give him SUCH an earful when I see him..._ But she looked around the rest of the garden, and the moonlit shadows in the middle of the afternoon were still there. _And if he was, wouldn’t he be kissing ME?_

Her dream counterpart was grinning at him, a teasing curve of her lips that Lydia had felt her own mouth make a thousand times but had never realized how it looked in Simon’s eyes—as though she shared some great joke, as though she looked at him and saw a man who _could_ be teased and poked and befriended. “James misses you too, I think.”

One eyebrow quirked lightly; the smile on his lips was faint and fond. “Does he? Perhaps he ought to come and find me, then. Supper cannot be ready yet.”

“There’s not enough room on this bench--” She was cut off with a yelp that dissolved into a helpless giggle against Simon’s hair as the vampire scooped her up—mounds of skirts and all—and pulled her over onto his lap. “Simon!” He was pressing feather-light kisses to her cheek, her jaw, her throat (the barest hint of fangs, but then he couldn’t help it, Lydia knew he was sorry for it) and she was laughing as she tried to protest. “Oh, you are _dreadful_...”

_He is. But… _Lydia swallowed hard, hugging herself at the rush of emotions she could feel through his dream. Respect, adoration, a giddy and breathless joy that she, Lydia, was warm and alive and in his arms and happy. _Love. He loves me._

“When a gentleman comes to dinner at the house of another gentleman, it is dearly to be hoped that he will forbear from sporting with his host’s wife.” But Jamie—who was sitting down on the bench beside them, hair only as touched by gray as it had been in 1907, face a little less lined, wearing a quite ordinary brown suit—was smiling wryly and putting an arm around Simon’s shoulders. “Were you anyone else, I would call you out.”

“Were I anyone else, I should never dare presume to sport with your lady wife in the first place.”

Simon’s own smile was easy and light, and Lydia took note of the way he leaned into Jamie’s side. Her calmly analytical side noted that Simon fit against his chest just as well as she did (_well, we’re the same height, of course_). The rest of her felt heat suffuse her face, even in a dream, at the thought (_They look well together...I wonder if—_) that shot through her mind. _No, I’m quite sure he doesn’t...well…_

Apparently he did, because he was leaning up to kiss Jamie’s cheek with a murmur of “Besides, we all know that if you truly wanted to kill me, ‘twould not be a fair fight.”

She felt trust roll off his words like a gentle breeze. _They understand each other,_ she realized. Her own love for her husband was echoed in the vampire’s dream, along with a deep current of respect—the acknowledgment of shared skills, shared experiences, shared loves. And, sharp on the heels of that, the spike of loss that was his belief that _respect_ was all he’d ever have, that only in dreams would he have this easy camaraderie, this gentle affection, the blissful warmth of them by his side and in his arms.

Heedless of any of this, her dream counterpart leaned her head against Simon’s and reached to squeeze Jamie’s hand. “I daresay you two are forgetting that _I_ might object if my two favorite men were to try to kill each other over me?”

From her vantage point, she saw Simon’s eyes turn serious and his arms tighten around her counterpart’s waist. “I would walk into sunlight at your command and for your good.” And somehow she knew he meant _both of you._

“You’re already _in_ sunlight.” Jamie removed his arm from around Simon’s shoulder, the better to stroke his hair like a cat; like a cat, Simon tilted his head into it, eyes closing in bliss. “Are you dreaming again?” He sounded endlessly fond—teasing, as the dream of Lydia had been, at the foibles of their companion. Part of her wasn’t at all surprised when he kissed Simon’s forehead, and then his mouth. She wondered if Jamie noticed the fangs in Simon’s dreams.

The sigh sounded like it came from the depths of the vampire’s soul. “I am. I know I am. But I wish never to wake.”

Lydia also wasn’t surprised when her dream counterpart insinuated an arm around Simon’s waist, catching him in a somewhat awkward embrace given the angle. “Ridiculous man, there’s hours of daylight yet! Plenty of time...”

“...dame Asher? Madame Asher, breakfast!”

She awoke with a full-body jerk that felt like her soul had been electrocuted. Sunlight was pouring in through her bedroom windows; behind the door, the maid was expecting an answer and she reflexively called back, “Just a moment!” as she fought to assemble her scattered thoughts. That’s right, she was in her home in New York, not in a courtyard garden. The air smelled of bacon, not roses. She was alone—_alone_, with Jamie in Russia somewhere and Simon dead asleep in his coffin—not curled up on Simon’s lap on a stone bench with her husband’s fingers twined with hers. Upstairs, Miranda would be eating her own breakfast and waiting for her mother to take her for a walk.

Her thoughts were her own. Her emotions—confusion, loss, a horribly resilient scrap of warmth in her chest at the sensation of Simon’s love for her—were her own.

But that dream had been entirely Simon’s, and she had no idea what to do about it.


	6. Psychic Dreams For Everyone pt 2

The sun sank below the horizon, and Don Simon Ysidro awoke with a start so violent that he cracked his head against the inside of his coffin. As he rubbed his forehead—in a day or so, with his luck, it would begin to show faint delayed bruising, and then Mistress Asher would _worry_—he fought to recapture what he’d seen in his dream only moments previously. It was rare for him to remember dreams fully; the normal ones, not sent by outside forces or compelled by poison, generally filtered away in the moonlight as they had upon waking in life. Snatches of the very pleasant one he’d been having earlier—a sunlit garden, Lydia in his lap and James at his side—flitted across his mind, but he set them aside. They weren’t important now.

He pushed the coffin lid aside and studied the velvet blackness of the basement. It looked the same as it had when he’d laid down at sunrise: gray sheetrock over brick, enormous coal bin in one corner, the tiny windows at the tops of the wall covered with inch-thick planks. But something felt _wrong_. He recognized the feeling in his stomach as queasiness and prodded it as he might a loose tooth. It felt like a leftover from his dream, not his illness; a memory of horror that was _not_ unceasing agony tempered only by the warmth of Lydia’s hands.

Sighing was entirely unnecessary, but the movement seemed to help a bit. While his mind spun, the very least he ought to do was dress and...

A grating, _loud_ meow echoed through the door at the top of the stairs.

...Feed the cat.

He truthfully wasn’t sure where the cat had come from. It was skinny, astonishingly orange with matching eyes, and seemed to utterly lack a sense of fear. Most animals kept a wide berth, knowing that here was a consummate predator; the cat, meanwhile, had trotted up to him as he left his house and rubbed against his shins with a trill as though greeting a long-lost friend. Simon could admit to himself that he’d fallen instantly and deeply in love, but he still hadn’t expected to see it again after it had had enough of being petted and told what a pretty thing it was.

That had been two nights ago, and now it was in his kitchen demanding food at the top of its feline lungs. He untangled his shroud from around his legs and made his way up the stairs. “I am coming, I am—“

As soon as he entered the kitchen, he found his legs under assault by roughly seven pounds of fur. The cat—he really ought to name it, he mused, but animals lived such short lives it was foolish to get attached—plowed into his ankles like a motorcar and purred just as loudly. Exasperated, he plucked it up and set it on the kitchen table. “No. You _wait_.”

“Mowww.”

“Yes, you are the king of all cats, but I cannot wave my hands and simply make food appear...” Nor could he seem to do such; the powers of suggestion vampires possessed seemed not to work on cats, and neither he nor Rhys (a moment, and his mind skittered away from memories of his once-master like a spider) had ever determined why. No, if the cat wanted meat and cream it would have to watch him open the icebox and be patient.

“Mraow?”

“Looking at me with your big eyes will also not make—” He opened the icebox, and the cold hit him like a physical force. _No. It—shouldn’t be—_

_Cold. Cold and that sick, gnawing feeling in his stomach; the last thing he had eaten had been half-moldy and that had been days ago. The sun was sinking through the birch trees up ahead, bathing his world in orange light; each time he looked it seemed to be closer to the horizon. Soon the light would be gone entirely, and then he would be alone in the dark and cold. He had to find people and shelter, had to keep moving, had to tell—a flash of copper in sunlight, a clean and brightly-lit laboratory with an assortment of labeled chemicals, a newspaper clipping of a man’s face—Lydia, Miranda, I’m sorry—before that happened or—_

—_Simon, keep them safe—_

_Or his pursuers would find him, and he would die._

Simon was aware that he’d sat down hard on the tiled floor, but his surroundings only came back to him when he registered the insistent press of a paw at his elbow.The certainty of _James is in great danger_ hit him like a punch to the gut. It wasn’t quite enough to banish the tiny, plaintive note that piped up in his head after it._ I thought we’d have more time. _They’d been...settling, he’d supposed, himself and Mistress Asher and little Miss Miranda. There were the beginnings of a routine. He’d met them last night for a showing of a silent film (Miranda had fallen asleep halfway through) and played chess with Mistress Asher until it had grown late, glorying in her smiles when she made a clever move and teasing when he inevitably trounced her. The James-shaped hole in their lives had not seemed as large then.

And now James was in mortal danger, and they were across the sea. Simon closed his eyes, thinking hard. _Perhaps ‘twas a nightmare, and I am overwrought. Perhaps I merely need to sit for a while with the cat and a book. But…_

He had only ever felt his dreams so inhabited when they were being sent by someone else. The thought was absurd, and he almost dismissed it out of hand. Another vampire certainly would not bother, and James was mortal. Despite their greatest desires, he had never seen a living human display anything he would term to be true magical or psychical powers. Such things were safely the realm of the Undead.

_Such things as I have seen,_ he thought with a chill that had nothing to do with the still open icebox. B_ut there is no reason they should not exist. And after spending so much time in the company of those who can manipulate the minds and dreams of those around them, is it not conceivable that a mortal, in peril and fear for their life, could instinctively reach out—surpassing the limits of the mind the way I have seen them in great extremity surpass the limits of the body—the same way I flung myself into their dreams aboard the City of Gold? To find those who might aid them?_

A rustling from the icebox drew his attention, and he reached in to pick up the cat which had torn open the paper wrapping to get at the meat within. With his hand at the back of its neck it couldn’t twist around to savage his fingers, but it made a spirited attempt. “Pray you haven’t knocked over the cream, _gatito_.”

It hadn’t. He poured some in a dish for it and drifted up the stairs to what, in a living man’s house, would likely have been the master bedroom. Now it served as a closet and dressing room; while he of course did not _need_ light, he had to fight the urge to turn on a few before he began his evening routine._ I am a creature of darkness. Shadows will not harm me. _

He thrust away the mental image of Lydia and James peacefully intertwined, unaware of lurking danger, but the hitherto-unconsidered worst part of having a _toilette_ one could complete without any conscious thought—comb hair, brush fangs because mortals tended to notice when you really did smell of nothing, dress in an appropriate suit and tie, comb hair again, seriously consider the utility of hair ribbons—was that it was far too easy to be pounced upon by unconscious thoughts, which cared nothing for a gentleman’s composure and indeed seemed downright eager to fill his mind with all the ways in which frail humans who had already suffered all manner of ills could expire in the frozen wastes. He knew very well that pneumonia had nearly killed James before. He did _not_ wish for a reminder.

Still, the memory was enough to get him to glance at the clock. _Still early. Lydia will yet be awake, and I… _His own thoughts gave him pause. He had told her, once, that he thought she would sense if James was in danger. Until that moment, he hadn’t believed it. _She will know. When she sleeps, she will know. Ought I to wait until then? If ‘twas an ill dream on my part, I will have worried her unduly_—the thought sent a pinch of regret into his chest—_but…_

But it had not been the fault of his mind. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. James had—somehow, against all that he’d believed mortals capable of—reached out to touch his mind in a desperate cry for help, and he could not simply leave the man’s wife unconscious of the danger.

He set out into the night.


	7. Hot Summer Nights (plotless OT3 cuddle pile)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I write this in my NYC bedroom, it is 80 degrees outside and the air really and truly does feel like hot soup. This? This is _wish fulfillment._

Traveler’s guides to New York City took care to mention the theaters, the hotels, the finest restaurants. They dwelled at length over dress codes and menus and manners; New York, they assured their readers, might appear overwhelming at first but it was really just like London or Paris if one knew where to look, and weren’t the locals’ accents charming? Those tourists or emigrés following the advice of their guides to the letter would find themselves perfectly well-prepared for life in this new and fascinating locale, this city which never slept.

James Asher was beginning to suspect that the sort of people who wrote traveler’s guides had never experienced New York City in the midst of summer. The air had a dampness to it that was almost tangible; any movement seemed to bring with it resistance, and leaving the relative cool of the house felt like being slapped n the face with a wet blanket. It was so saturated already that even sweating didn’t help; it clung to his skin and only made him long for great quantities of soap and an ice bath. Even his lightest summer-weight suits and straw hats were nearly suffocating, and shade didn’t provide much in the way of relief. The only way to sleep, Lydia had informed him, was to strip naked, open all the windows, and pray for a breeze. Not that breezes were much better; even in this fine neighborhood, shifting winds brought the stench of garbage left to rot in the sun to assault their noses. In weather like this tempers ran high; he could dimly hear his neighbors arguing through their own open windows.

Lydia sprawled next to him amidst the blankets. Though she was gloriously and heart-stoppingly naked, they weren’t touching; even her hair was quarantined within its own section of bed. The idea of increasing the heat within their bedroom even with a kiss was unbearable. Hearing his thoughts, she turned her head slowly to look at him. “This is _dreadful_.”

“It is.” His gaze drifted out the open window, free of its usual swags of garlic and wild rose. Their silver chains were coiled on the nightstand; any vampire would find them easy prey tonight.

As if on cue, a whispering voice stole through his mind._ James?_ And then, a little more hesitantly, _Lydia?_

James exhaled and felt something in his chest unwind; tension he hadn’t even realized he was carrying melted away. He fixed the image of the open window in his mind the way Simon had taught him, when they had all three of them realized that their minds were closer than they’d ever dreamed.

And so, because he was looking for it, he was aware when Simon alighted on the windowsill and took a long moment to study them both. The warmth in the vampire’s gaze made him flush, but the brief widening of those crystalline yellow eyes made him grin. “Good evening.”

Simon’s gaze visibly lingered on Lydia’s long legs and James’s bare chest before he made eye contact. James couldn’t even tease him for it; whatever lay between them, this thing beyond friendship and duty and reciprocity, was still so new and fragile that it didn’t feel real with Simon still across the room and not touching them. “You called me, and I came.” A faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips as he added, “Though I did not think it would be for _this_.”

Lydia smiled at him, warm as the sun. “You wretch. I know it’s fine weather for _you_, but _we_ are dying.”

“Are you?” Simon moved towards the bed like a cat, letting them see it as he peeled off his gloves and slung his jacket and tie over a chair. A moment’s inattention, a haze over James’s mind, let him know he had also discarded shoes and socks as well; there was no way for even a vampire to do _that_ elegantly. “Because you seem in fine health to _me_. And truly,”--now he stood at the foot of the bed, eyes alight--”the weather is lovely tonight.”

Lydia threw the nearest pillow at his head. The breeze of its passing stirred Simon’s hair, and he grinned teasingly. He almost looked human—though the scars on his face stood out like lines in wax—until the light caught on the tip of one fang.

It tugged at something in James’s chest, and he pushed himself up on one elbow to motion Simon closer. “Come here.” He couldn’t keep the roughness from his voice, didn’t even try as the tone seemed to spark something in Simon’s eyes. “Have a better look.” An invitation, the first clear one he’d uttered since that night months ago when he’d blurted out, half-delirious, _Kiss me._

And Simon had.

Now the vampire stood still, briefly inspecting him with his head cocked—and then he moved, kneeling over him on the bed and slowly straddling his hips. This motion, too, James was aware was for their benefit; if he’d wanted, he could pin him in an instant. He wanted James to _watch_. “Oh?” James was acutely, painfully aware of all the places they were touching: his hips, the outside of his thighs, his stomach. Even through fabric Simon’s skin was freezing; when bare fingers brushed his stomach, he let out an entirely involuntary squeak.

Simon, damn him, grinned and sat up, very deliberately not repeating the action. “I thought I was being summoned to keep you from entirely melting away. Was I too bold?”

_No_.

“Good.”

This time his hands slid purposefully up James’s chest to his throat, daggerlike claws like the scratching of moth feet until James was shivering with it, letting his head fall back to aid the exploration of those wonderfully cold hands. “Ah...” Under the gentle, inexorable pressure, he sank back to the bed and wrapped one of his own arms around Simon’s waist, pulling them down together. It wasn’t something he’d ever have been able to do if Simon had objected, but they knew each other by now. Simon had made it clear in a thousand small ways that they were exempt from his usual dislike of being handled; in fact, he seemed to thrill in it. James certainly did; having the vampire atop him felt a bit like a light, blessedly chilled blanket. And, of course, there were other good points.

When he slid a hand into Simon’s hair, the vampire sighed and lowered his mouth to his for a kiss. It was cool, dry, tasted of absolutely nothing, and if he dared to deepen the kiss James knew he would feel the fangs behind those narrow lips. Feeling a little bedeviled, he did—and was rewarded with a small sound of pleasure as Simon all but melted on top of him, one hand cupping the back of his neck to draw him closer. “Mm…” Even when he pulled away, they were still nearly nose-to-nose, and his eyes were like twin lamps. “You are a _furnace_.”

Lydia, he was aware, had been watching them with keen interest. He didn’t need to look to know that her eyes were gleaming behind her spectacles. “He is, isn’t he? This is what I have to share a bed with.” The mattress shifted as she rolled towards them, smoothing her palm down Simon’s spine. James was treated to the sight of a vampire closing his eyes in bliss at being stroked.

_Just like a cat_, he thought, and didn’t realize that of course Simon would hear it until those golden eyes opened to narrow slits of disdain. He met that gaze and focused very hard on the memory of a stray cat he’d seen in Peking, all long limbs and wedge-shaped head.

“James.” That one word held a small universe of scorn.

It wasn’t an expression he could maintain with Lydia pressing close to both of them, her thigh like a localized inferno where it was almost touching James’s hip and her hand mapping the lines of Simon’s ribs through his fine linen shirt. “You feel...” Her voice was all academic curiosity, but James could see the way her eyes sparkled. “Hmm. I’m not sure. We’d best get this off.”

“If my mistress commands.” He twisted, rolling off of James and onto her in one smooth motion that, James quickly saw, was aided by her tugging him over. Though his leg still slid against James’s side, all his attention was on Lydia. It was her husband’s turn to watch.

Lydia was bolder than he was. It didn’t come as a surprise; she’d loved the vampire, or known she had, for longer, and her hands were sure as she unbuttoned his shirt and set collar and cuffs aside to join her spectacles on the nightstand. His skin was scarcely a shade darker, stretched tight over bone and wiry muscle. When he shed the illusions hiding them—she’d want him bared in this way too—old wounds caught the light, and James catalogued them in his head: gashes at his wrists, burns to his fingers, a singed-looking cut along his ribs. Simon trembled at the first touch of her hands to his bare skin, seeming to hold still only by a great effort of will when she traced the edge of that cut. The sound he made was only audible in their heads, but still Lydia paused. James took a moment to curse all vampire hunters purely for the concern in his wife’s doe-brown eyes. “Does it pain you?”

He shook his head, nearly smiling. “Not when ‘tis your hands.” Appeased, she finally sprawled back and smiled at him, and he pressed her down into the mattress. Clawed hands slid over the curve of her hip, the swell of her ribcage; when he buried them in her hair she surged under him, pulling him into a kiss that had him making that same quietly pleased noise he’d made at James’s. “Mm. _Lydia_.” He said her name like a prayer, like a drowning man sighting the shore, and it made James smile. When he petted along her sides she squirmed in a way that, to judge by the way Simon’s grip tightened, worked almost as well on the Undead man who loved her as it did on the living one. And then he nuzzled her throat, and it was her turn to yelp at the cold.

James grinned at them both. “And you said it was too hot for that.”

As fair as she was, her blush spread all over. It was as distracting now as it had been the first night he’d discovered it, and so it took him a moment to focus on her words. “It _is_. But...” She gestured at Simon, who rolled off her so that he was wedged more or less between them, head pillowed on James’s outstretched arm. Skin like white silk had begun to warm from their hands and bodies, but he was still far colder than any living man would be.

_Well, with him here… _He considered the likelihood of sweating more than he already was, even with Simon between them, and grimaced. _No_. Still, Simon’s hair was right there and very soft, and he couldn’t resist burying his face in it. From there it was a natural progression to put his free arm around the vampire’s waist, hauling him in and letting the chill sink into his skin.

Simon was utterly pliable against him, whispery voice soft and contemplative. If he focused, James suspected he’d feel the vampire’s utter contentment rolling off him in waves. He half expected him to purr. “Strangely enough, I cannot find it in myself to complain.” He didn’t sigh, but it hovered in his pause anyway. “But if we continue much longer, we are like to reach equilibrium.”

James had known it was coming, and he still groaned. “..._Please_ don’t bring that up.” The mental picture of _three_ too-warm bodies in a single bed made him long for another ice bath. Or perhaps a trip to the South Pole.

Simon’s voice held a mischievous edge. “Oh, are you still overheated?” James’s arm over him was loose enough that it was an easy task—even setting aside the terrible strength of a vampire—to roll over, meeting his gaze with gleaming eyes as he skated his claws delicately up the side of James’s neck. As long as he avoided the scars it was just enough to tickle; when his lips twitched, Simon pressed the lightest of kisses to them. It felt like a balm.

He swallowed, pulling him close. “You know—” He was sure he’d had a plan to finish that sentence, but then Simon was rolling half on top of him and his mouth was tracing the same path his claws had been, and his thoughts scattered. The scars were gnarled patches of numbness, but the skin between them was sensitive enough and now in _dire_ need of cooling. Ice-cold lips mapped a path down his throat to his collarbone; when Lydia’s caress to Simon’s shoulder made the vampire hum, he felt the vibrations against his skin.

Then Simon drew away, looking down at him. A lock of hair brushed James’s cheek, distracting not at all from the simmering emotion in his eyes. “I do. I can hear the pulse in your neck, how fast it beats. I can feel the heat rolling off your skin. And I do wish to ease it, if only for a little while.”

When he shifted his weight to bring them into greater contact, James let out an entirely involuntary sigh. Simon’s bare skin seemed to be soaking up all the heat and humidity like a sponge, and he felt like he could breathe for the first time in days. Even Lydia pressing against them, trying to steal some of the coolness for herself (and groaning in approval when Simon leaned into her) didn’t affect the sheer relief of it. “You are doing,” he managed, “an admirable job.”

“It pleases me to hear that.” Simon shivered, closing his eyes as Lydia trailed her fingers down his spine again. Something passed between them—the echo of it tickled James’s mind—and then he twisted away from him to arrange himself on the bed and tug her close, letting out a soft sigh when she molded herself against him. James could guess something of how Simon felt; if he was a furnace, Lydia was surely a brand, and what was torment for a living man was deliciously warm to the Undead.

For a long moment they simply laid there. Outside the breeze still rustled through the garden, but their neighbors had stopped arguing. Perhaps they had found peace as well. James’s own thoughts felt pleasantly hazy. He had his wife and their friend by his side and nothing to do but sleep. Though he’d been in contact with vampires for long enough to feel a twinge of alertness at the still-open window, his rational mind knew it was ridiculous. _The oldest and most powerful vampire in America is here in __our__ arms._ The endpoint of that train of thought took a while to arrive. _And he loves us._

Lydia made a quiet noise, tilting her head to nose at Simon’s neck. James’s gaze was drawn to the way her fingers traced meaningless patterns on the vampire’s chest. “Simon, have I—have we—that is—”

His head cocked to one side like a bird. “Oh?”

James exhaled, and brought to his mind all that they’d been through together. Endless train rides through Europe, equally endless nights of being annihilated at chess. Desperate rescues in Paris, in China, in the wilds of Scotland. Half dying of fever and walking through Simon’s memories, knowing to the marrow of his bones that they were mirrors of each other. The vampire drifting through his dreams in the Russian woods, erasing nightmares with the simple balm of Lydia and Miranda safe in New York. The moment, after everything, when he’d been sure that death would claim him—and it had been Simon and Lydia pulling him out of hell instead. He heard distantly the crackle of Lydia adding her own recollections—picquet, secure arms around her, laughing escapades and fraught conversations in the dead of night. Black, spiky handwriting on crumpled paper. And throughout it all, the steadily increasing awareness of their love.

“...Oh.” He blinked slowly; James saw his throat work as he swallowed. “You...have mentioned that on occasion.” Though his expression didn’t shift, something kindled in his eyes as he glanced at James. “What brings on this sudden outpouring of emotion?”

James chose his words with care. He didn’t trust them to any mental powers. “The...last time I said it—the last time _we_ said it—we were all rather fraught. I, for one, wanted to make sure you knew that our feelings were not.” He felt his throat close around the words. “Were not precipitated by the strain we were under.” They’d barely recovered from their last misadventure. His shoulder had still ached, and he’d feared Lydia had cracked her ankle. But Simon had been there, and neither of them had been able to keep silent.

Simon looked away from them, seemingly absorbed in the view from the window. “I knew. I knew from the moment you took my hands.” James could hear the memories behind it, fragments of clasped hands and understanding smiles and _I never thought you’d come_ drawing him, one step at a time, into light. The pope’s staff, bursting into flower.

Lydia’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh. _Simon_.”

And then she was kissing him, and his genuinely delighted smile struck James through the heart such that he had to steal kisses as well, until Simon was nestled into the pillows between them and gazing at them warmly. “I trust you are both feeling better?”

He’d almost forgotten about the heat of the night. “...I am.”

Lydia had tucked herself against Simon’s side, her head resting against (but not directly on) his bony shoulder and her hair spilling over them both. She sighed as he carded his fingers through it. “Well, we are _now_. Thank you, really—this was wonderful.”

There was, James knew, no point in asking Simon to stay the night—as he thought he might have, if their vampire had been a living man—when he needed to be safely in his coffin by dawn. Nor was he so desperate as to project the thought that buzzed around inside his mind: that he’d _miss_ the man if he left now.

Simon’s dry voice held more than a note of fondness. “And now, I think you both need rest.”

Sleep beckoned, lapping at his toes. He let it drag him under.

  



End file.
